Rina Sawayama has a few notes following Sabrina Carpenter’s Saturday Night Live appearance. In an Instagram Story post about the pop star’s performance of “Nobody’s Son,” Sawayama highlighted an evident lack of cultural research behind the studio set, which was inspired by a karate studio and featured tatami mats.
“Big love to Sabrina but fellow artists creative teams … if we are clearly referencing a culture, please can you do so with the research, respect and care it deserves,” wrote Sawayama, who is Japanese-British. “Shoes on tatami is jail.”
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Carpenter only stood on the mats for a moment, but throughout her performance two red-belt opponents battled it out while wearing sneakers with their uniforms. Representatives for Carpenter did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
Sawayama has previously spoken about the role that pop music played in connecting her with peers at school after her family immigrated to London from Japan. “If you’re new to that school or whatever, it can really connect you to the rest of the students,” she said in 2022. She took inspiration from Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani, and Lady Gaga, all of whom inform her work now. “I still feel that same excitement when I listen to songs from back then that inspired me,” she said.
Stefani herself has a long history of evoking Japanese imagery throughout her career and toeing the line between appreciation and appropriation, typically leaning more towards the latter. In 2023, she told Allure, “My God, I’m Japanese and I didn’t know it … If [people are] going to criticize me for being a fan of something beautiful and sharing that, then I just think that doesn’t feel right. I think it was a beautiful time of creativity… a time of the ping-pong match between Harajuku culture and American culture.”
Carpenter doesn’t fall into this category, at least. All Sawayama is suggesting is that the Louboutins and Adidas stay off the mats next time.
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